Over the past few months, a few details about the MASTERS OF HORROR series produced by Anchor Bay have popped up on the web. Simply put, it is a low budget (direct to DVD) series that will feature different directors doing individual entires. But recently at Fangoria.com, John Landis gave more detail about the series and who might be involved. Here are some of his quotes:
"each one of us is supposed to direct a movie, so now we are doing it. They are giving us a budget of $1.5 million for each film, and with that money we can basically do anything we want, as long as it’s shot in Vancouver, with the same crew. And it has to be scary, somehow!"
"I’m doing the first one," Landis continues, "and John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Sam Raimi, George Romero and Hideo Nakata are all doing one. They’re trying to make it much more international now. It’s an interesting deal because Anchor Bay owns the DVD rights only for the United States, so we are free to do whatever we want on everything else. So we might do a feature, cutting together two or three episodes, or something for cable television. What’s fun is that because it’s DVD, there’s no censorship at all, so MASTERS OF HORROR is going to be pretty gruesome and outrageous."
With that line up of talent, I am more than excited about this. I can only hope for more directors to become attached to this (Stuart Gordon please!). It reminds me of the announcement of POE when they had four directors attached (it eventually became TWO EVIL EYES). Anyone else excited about this?
I think it's all pretty far along at this point. As of last summer I'd heard that Joe Dante, Don Coscarelli, Dario Argento, Guillermo Del Toro, Frank Darabont, and yes, Stuart Gordon are committed in addition to the ones you mention, also Mick Garris of course, whose idea this series was. From what I've heard(I know one of the screenwriters tapped to do an episode) the most likely home for this is going to be Showtime, but like Landis said beyond dvd it's still up in the air. Steve Niles and Richard Matheson are also writing eps last I heard, and Hooper's supposed to be working with Kim Henkel again on his ep. I just hope we don't have to wait too long to get a taste.
I'm pretty excited about it. I think it will be particularly nice to see people like Sam Raimi and Joe Dante make another horror film...even if it is only a one hour tv thing. It's a shame that they have to do it in this venue rather than features. Who knows? If it's a big success maybe that will happen. It certainly couldn't hurt, and I'm very anxious to see them. I hope it's better than the REBEL HIGHWAY series; some were really good, some weren't.
I wish they could coax Roger Corman into doing one. That would be INCREDIBLE!
I don't want to sound like Donny Downer, but I don't have a very high expectation for any of these. Landis, Carpenter and Hooper haven't done anything worthy of their reputations since the early eighties. That's twenty years, folks! What kind of cinematographers, actors and composers can we expect in the budget range of 1.5 mil? I think of all the classic horror masters, only Romero could actually function in that arena, and only because he's used to directing on the cheap. Raimi can pull talent, and will probably be the best of the bunch. Nakata at only two US releases (counting Ring 2) is already overrated. Hey, I hope I'm wrong, but these jam projects almost always blow.